// PRIVACY POLICY
Your privacy, plainly explained.
1. Introduction
This Privacy Policy explains how TradeSoft ("we", "us", or "our") collects, uses, stores, and shares your personal information when you use the TradeSoft mobile application ("App"), the TradeSoft website and web app at tradesoft.app and its subdomains, including nz.tradesoft.app ("Website"), and related services (collectively, "the Service").
Where a feature is available both in the App and on the Website, references in this Policy to the App apply equally to the Website.
By using TradeSoft, you agree to the collection and use of your information as described in this Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the App.
We may update this Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes via in-app notification. Continued use of the App after changes are published constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.
For questions or requests relating to this Policy, contact us at [email protected].
2. Who We Are
TradeSoft is operated by a sole trader based in New Zealand. We are subject to the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 ("Privacy Act"). Where we have users in other jurisdictions in the future, we will comply with applicable local privacy laws.
3. Information We Collect
3.1 Information You Provide Directly
| Information | When Collected |
|---|---|
| Full name | Account registration |
| Email address | Account registration |
| Password (hashed, never stored in plain text) | Account registration |
| Display name / callsign | Account setup (optional) |
| Profile photo | Account setup (optional) |
| Home region and closest town | Account setup |
| Phone number | Phone verification (optional) |
| Bio and social media usernames | Profile editing (optional) |
| Payment instructions: your bank account name, bank account number, and any payment notes you provide | When you add payment details to your account (optional) |
| GST number | When a business account adds payment details (optional) |
| Listing content (title, description, photos, price, condition, etc.) | When you create a listing |
| Messages and Q&A content | When you communicate with other users |
| Feedback and ratings | When you complete a trade |
| Club membership status and invitation records (accepted, declined, pending, and any reason provided) | When a Club Manager invites you to join their club and when you respond |
| Users you block | When you block another user |
| Reports you submit (against a listing, user, or message), including the reason and any detail you add | When you report content or a user |
| Business name, your own name, and your email address | Commercial account registration (see Section 11) |
| Two-factor authentication enrolment data, used to check the codes from your authenticator app | Commercial account registration (mandatory) |
| Business profile details (website, description, logo, header image, public contact email and phone number, opening hours) | Commercial account setup and whenever you edit it |
| Business address and location details (address, place identifier, coordinates, region and town) | Commercial account setup, and when you add or edit a location |
| Plan selection and subscription billing records | When you buy, change, or cancel a commercial plan |
| Requests to claim a business directory entry, including anything you send us in support of it | When you claim a business we have listed |
| Your automatic reply template | When you set up an automatic reply on a commercial account |
3.2 Information Collected Automatically
When you use the App or the Website, we and our service providers may collect:
- Device information: device type, operating system, and version
- App usage data: screens viewed, features used, session duration, and interactions within the App
- Approximate location: used at first launch to verify you are in New Zealand and to pre-populate your region and town. We do not continuously track your location.
- Crash and error data: diagnostic information generated when the App encounters an error
- Push notification tokens: to deliver notifications to your device
- Website information: when you use the Website, your IP address, browser type and version, and the pages you visit. When you reach our checkout page, this information is also used by our payment provider to detect fraud, as described in Section 3.3.
3.3 Information from Third Parties
We receive limited information from the following third-party services when you use them in connection with TradeSoft:
- Supabase: our backend infrastructure provider. Authentication events, database records, and file storage are processed by Supabase.
- RevenueCat: processes and verifies in-app purchases made through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. We receive purchase confirmation and credit balance information. We do not receive or store your payment card details.
- Stripe: processes card payments you make on the Website (featured listings and bump credits) through Stripe Checkout, embedded in our checkout page. Your card details are entered directly into Stripe's own secure payment fields and are sent to Stripe, not to us. We never receive or store your full card number. Stripe passes back to us a confirmation of payment, the card brand and last four digits, and the billing name and email address you give at checkout. Stripe also handles commercial account subscriptions, in which case it additionally passes back the plan, the amount actually charged, the renewal date, and the outcome of each renewal payment. Stripe also uses technical information such as your IP address and browser or device details to detect and prevent payment fraud. Stripe handles this information both on our behalf and for its own legal, fraud-prevention, and financial-compliance purposes, under Stripe's privacy policy.
- Cloudflare: sits in front of our web services as a security and content-delivery layer, and processes your IP address, request headers, and similar technical information for that purpose. Cloudflare also provides the anti-bot challenge ("Turnstile") on the commercial account registration form, which is what stops the form being used to send verification emails to people who did not ask for them. The challenge checks signals from your browser and returns a pass or fail result to us. It does not tell us who you are.
- Google Maps Platform: when you enter an address for a club venue, an event, or a business location, Google's address autocomplete and mapping services process what you type and return matching addresses, a place identifier, and coordinates. Maps shown on business and event pages are also served by Google.
- Twilio: if you choose to verify your phone number, Twilio sends and verifies the SMS one-time code. Your phone number is shared with Twilio for this purpose only and is not used for any other communication.
- Google Cloud Vision API: when you upload images to a listing, those images may be submitted to Google Cloud Vision API as part of TradeSoft ScamScan, our automated fraud-detection feature. Google processes the image to identify whether it has appeared elsewhere on the internet. Google does not retain submitted images beyond the duration of the API request. See Section 9 for more detail.
- PostHog: we use PostHog for product analytics and crash reporting. PostHog collects anonymised usage data and error logs to help us understand how the App is used and to identify and fix issues. PostHog may set identifiers to distinguish users at an aggregate level. No personally identifiable information is intentionally sent to PostHog.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS): we use Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) to deliver our emails, and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) to pass delivery, bounce, spam-complaint, and unsubscribe events back to our systems. AWS processes your email address and the content of the message for the purpose of delivering it. See Section 7.2.
- Hostinger: our web hosting provider. Hostinger hosts the tradesoft.app website and the mailing platform we use to send our emails, which means our mailing list is stored on servers Hostinger operates on our behalf.
3.4 Cookies on the Website
The Website uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies:
- Essential cookies: set by Stripe on our checkout page to process your payment and to detect fraudulent activity. These are required for payments to work. If you block them, you will not be able to pay on the Website.
- Analytics cookies: set by PostHog to measure how the Website is used, as described in Section 3.3.
- Security cookies: Cloudflare may set a short-lived cookie when you complete the anti-bot challenge on the commercial account registration form, so that the result of the challenge can be checked. Blocking it will stop you from being able to register.
We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, and we do not sell any information collected through them. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings at any time, though doing so may stop parts of the Website from working.
4. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect to:
| Purpose | Lawful Basis |
|---|---|
| Create and manage your account | Performance of contract |
| Display your public profile and listings to other users | Performance of contract |
| Enable messaging and Q&A between users | Performance of contract |
| Process purchases made in the App or on the Website, and manage credit balances | Performance of contract |
| Take card payments on the Website and issue refunds where due (Stripe) | Performance of contract |
| Check payments for fraud, and keep records required for tax and financial compliance | Legal obligation / legitimate interest (fraud prevention) |
| Verify your email address and optionally your phone number | Performance of contract |
| Restrict access to users outside New Zealand | Legitimate interest / legal compliance |
| Send transactional notifications (new messages, listing expiry, trade prompts, feedback requests) | Performance of contract |
| Send promotional notifications about TradeSoft features, offers, or community updates | Legitimate interest (with opt-out available) |
| Send marketing, promotional, and announcement emails about TradeSoft to our mailing list | Legitimate interest, based on your relationship with us as a TradeSoft user (unsubscribe available in every email) |
| Deliver our emails, and process delivery, bounce, spam-complaint, and unsubscribe notifications so that we stop emailing invalid or unwilling addresses (Amazon SES and SNS) | Legitimate interest / legal compliance (list hygiene and honouring opt-outs) |
| Measure whether our emails were delivered, opened, or clicked, to improve what we send | Legitimate interest (with opt-out available) |
| Register, review, and approve commercial accounts, and check that a business is who it says it is | Performance of contract / legitimate interest (marketplace trust and fraud prevention) |
| Publish business profiles and the business directory, and mark listings from businesses as In-Trade | Performance of contract / legal compliance (so buyers can tell a business from a private seller) |
| Bill commercial subscriptions and keep the invoice records that go with them (Stripe) | Performance of contract / legal obligation |
| Improve the App through usage analytics and crash reporting (PostHog) | Legitimate interest |
| Scan listing images via TradeSoft ScamScan (Google Cloud Vision API) to detect potentially stolen or fraudulent images | Legitimate interest / fraud prevention |
| Store your payment details and share them with another member when you choose to send them in a conversation | Performance of contract |
| Scan messages, including message text and images, via TradeSoft ScamScan to detect scams and fraud, and flag content for review by our team | Legitimate interest / fraud prevention |
| Check account details against identifiers associated with accounts previously suspended for fraud, and suspend or restrict matching accounts | Legitimate interest / fraud prevention |
| Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and violations of our Terms of Service | Legitimate interest / legal obligation |
| Operate in-app safety tools (including user blocking and the reporting of listings, users, and messages) and action the reports we receive | Legitimate interest / safety and abuse prevention |
| Enable Club Verification features, including email-based member lookup, invitation management, and display of club association on profiles and listings | Consent / Legitimate interest |
| Comply with applicable legal obligations | Legal obligation |
5. Information Shared with Other Users
TradeSoft is a community marketplace. The following information is visible to other logged-in users of the App:
- Your display name (or full name if no display name is set)
- Your profile photo (if uploaded)
- Your home region
- Your last online status (time-relative format)
- Your aggregate feedback score and feedback history
- Your active listings
- Your phone verified badge (if applicable)
- Your Club Verified badge and club association (club name and link to the club's website or social media), if you have accepted a club membership invitation
- Content you post in public Q&A threads
- Threads and replies you post in Discussions, and their scores
Discussions. Discussions is a community board that only signed-in users can read. It is not visible to the public web or to search engines, but anything you post there is visible to every other signed-in user, under your display name and profile photo. Your ten most recent threads and replies also appear as a Discussions section on your profile. You can switch that section off for other people under Dashboard → Settings → Privacy with Show my discussions on my profile, and you can switch on Prevent discussion tagging so you no longer appear in the list of users other people can mention with @. Deleting a thread of your own removes your name and the body of the post but leaves the replies underneath readable, and deleting a reply leaves a Deleted by author placeholder in its place, still showing your name, so the conversation around it still makes sense.
Club Manager email lookup: verified Club Managers can search for a TradeSoft account by entering an email address. If a matching account exists, the Club Manager will see that user's display name and profile photo. See Section 10 for full details.
Payment details. Your payment details are only shown to another member when you choose to send them in a conversation. When you share them, we also show that member when your payment details were first set, when they were last changed, and how many times they have changed. We keep a record of every share and every change. We show similar information for verified phone numbers, including when the number was verified.
Commercial accounts. If you use a commercial account, your public identity is your business profile rather than a personal profile. Publicly visible are your business name, description, logo and header image, website, any public contact email address and phone number you choose to publish, your locations and their addresses and opening hours, your active listings, your events, and your feedback. The name of the individual who registered the account is not published. See Section 11.
What a business sees when you use the Buy button. If you use the Buy button on a commercial listing, you are taken to that business's own website and your TradeSoft display name is added to the web address, so the business can match an order in its own system to your TradeSoft account. Your email address, phone number, and real name are not sent. Clicking Buy also opens a message thread on the listing, so the business sees your display name and profile photo exactly as any other seller you message would. What the business then does on its own website is governed by its privacy policy, not by this one.
The following is not publicly visible:
- Your email address
- Your phone number (unless you choose to display it on a listing)
- Your full name (if a display name is set)
- Your payment details, unless you choose to send them to a member in a conversation
- Your exact location (used internally for location features, region & nearest town is shown publicly)
When you complete a trade and leave feedback, the listing title is stored as a snapshot. The listing itself is not linked from your feedback history, to protect the privacy of deleted listings.
6. Information Shared with Third Parties
We do not sell your personal information. We share your information with third parties only in the following circumstances:
- Service providers: Supabase (infrastructure), RevenueCat (purchase verification), Twilio (phone verification), Google Cloud Vision API (ScamScan image fraud detection), Google Maps Platform (address lookup and maps), Cloudflare (security, content delivery and the anti-bot challenge), and PostHog (analytics and crash reporting), as described in Section 3.3. These providers process data on our behalf and are contractually required to protect it.
- Email and hosting: our mailing list is held on our own mailing platform, which is hosted for us by Hostinger. Messages are delivered by Amazon Web Services (sending via SES, and delivery and bounce events via SNS), as described in Sections 3.3 and 7.2. These providers process your email address on our behalf in order to store the list, send our messages, and keep the list clean. We do not sell, rent, or share our mailing list with anyone else.
- Apple / Google: purchases made in the App are processed by the App Store or Google Play. Their privacy policies govern how they handle your payment and purchase information.
- Stripe: purchases and commercial subscriptions bought on the Website are processed by Stripe. Your card details go directly to Stripe and are not shared with us. See Section 3.3.
- Businesses you contact: when you message, buy from, or leave feedback for a commercial account, that business sees the same information any other seller would, plus your display name in the outbound link if you used the Buy button. See Section 11.3. We do not give businesses a customer list, a data export, or your email address.
- Legal obligations: we may disclose your information if required to do so by law, court order, or government authority, or where we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to protect the safety of any person or to prevent fraud or illegal activity.
- Business transfer: in the event of a sale, merger, or transfer of TradeSoft's business, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you via in-app notification if this occurs.
7. Notifications & Email Communications
7.1 Push Notifications
We send two types of push notifications:
Transactional notifications: directly related to your use of the App, including:
- New private messages
- Responses to your public Q&A questions
- Listing expiry reminders
- Trade completion prompts
- Feedback requests
- Club membership invitations
Promotional notifications: updates about TradeSoft features, community news, or special offers.
You can manage notification preferences at any time in the App under Settings → Notifications. You may also revoke notification permissions at the device level via your iOS or Android settings. Revoking device-level permission will stop all notifications, including transactional ones.
7.2 Email Communications
We send two types of email, and they are treated differently.
Service emails are a necessary part of running your account. These include email address verification, password resets, security and login-related notices, purchase receipts, responses to your support enquiries, and notices about changes to these policies or to the Service. Because these emails are required to operate your account, you cannot unsubscribe from them while your account is open.
Marketing emails include product announcements, new features and app releases, community news, and occasional offers. When you create a TradeSoft account, or join our waitlist, your email address is added to our mailing list so that we can keep you up to date about the Service. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email we send you, and we will stop sending you marketing email. We do this on the basis of the relationship you have with us as a TradeSoft user, not as a condition of using the App: unsubscribing costs you nothing and changes nothing about your account.
How our email is sent
Our mailing list is held on our own mailing platform, which runs on our web hosting rather than on a third-party marketing service. For each subscriber it stores your email address, your first name (if you gave one), your subscription status, and engagement data such as whether a message was delivered, opened, or clicked.
Messages are delivered through Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) passes delivery, bounce, spam-complaint, and unsubscribe events back to our platform. This means your email address and the content of the message are processed by those services on our behalf. See Section 16 for where our hosting and email sending take place.
Our marketing emails may record whether a message was delivered, opened, or had a link clicked. We use this to understand which announcements are useful and to stop sending to addresses that are not working. If your address hard-bounces or you mark our email as spam, we add it to a suppression list and stop emailing it.
Your control
- Every marketing email includes a working unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing is free, takes effect on our systems immediately, and requires no explanation.
- You can also unsubscribe by emailing [email protected].
- Unsubscribing from marketing email does not stop service emails, and it does not affect your account or your ability to use the App.
- Marketing email preferences are separate from push notification preferences. Turning off one does not turn off the other.
We comply with the New Zealand Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007: our marketing emails clearly identify TradeSoft as the sender, include a functional unsubscribe facility in every message, and we act on unsubscribe requests promptly.
8. Location Data
We request access to your device location in the following circumstances:
- First launch / onboarding: to verify that you are located within New Zealand, and to pre-populate your home region and closest town during account setup
- Listing creation: to pre-populate the region and town fields for a new listing
We do not continuously track or log your location. Location data is used at the point of collection to determine your region and nearest town from our fixed seeded list, it is not stored as raw coordinates associated with your account.
If you deny location permissions, region and town fields remain available for manual selection.
9. Image Storage & TradeSoft ScamScan
9.1 Image Storage
Photos you upload (profile photos and listing images) are stored in Supabase Storage, scoped to your user ID. Your profile photo is stored at a path unique to your account and is overwritten when you update it. Listing photos are stored per listing and are removed from storage on the retention schedule set out below, which covers deleted listings as well as listings that are sold, archived or expired.
Images uploaded to TradeSoft are accessible to other logged-in users of the App as part of the normal operation of the marketplace.
Photos are also removed on a schedule. Listing photos, photos sent in messages, and photos you upload but never attach to a listing each have their own retention period, set out in Section 12 and in our Terms of Service (Section 4.7).
9.2 TradeSoft ScamScan
TradeSoft ScamScan is our automated fraud-detection system. It covers two things: the images uploaded to listings, and the messages sent between members. Both are described below.
Listing images. When you upload images to a listing, TradeSoft may submit those images to Google Cloud Vision API. The API performs a reverse image search to determine whether the image has appeared elsewhere on the internet, which may indicate the use of stolen or stock photography in a fraudulent listing.
ScamScan is an automated tool and is not infallible. A flag does not confirm fraud; it is one signal used alongside other moderation signals. If your image is flagged, you may dispute the result as a false positive or mark the image as a manufacturer or stock photo for review by our team.
Google processes submitted images solely to perform the reverse image analysis. Google does not retain your images beyond the duration of the API call, and they are not used to train Google's models. Data processed by Google is subject to Google's privacy commitments and may be processed in the United States. See Section 16 for international transfer details.
9.3 ScamScan Message Scanning
To help keep TradeSoft safe, ScamScan automatically scans messages, including message text and images, for signs of scams and fraud. This includes detecting bank account numbers and phone numbers, and checking them against details associated with accounts previously suspended for fraud.
Unlike the listing-image scanning in Section 9.2, message scanning runs on our own systems. Message content is not sent to a third-party scanning service.
This scanning is automated and applies to all messages on the platform, including messages sent before this Policy was updated. Flagged content may be reviewed by our team.
Message scanning is not infallible. A flag is one signal used alongside others and does not by itself confirm that a message or an account is fraudulent. Where a flag is upheld we may remove content, or suspend or terminate the account responsible, as set out in our Terms of Service. See Section 18 for automated suspensions and how to contest one.
10. Club Verification
TradeSoft operates a Club Verification programme through which verified representatives of New Zealand airsoft clubs ("Club Managers") can associate TradeSoft users with their club.
10.1 Data Collected
When you are involved in the club verification process, we collect and store:
- Club membership status and the club you are associated with
- The date and outcome of any club invitation (accepted, declined, or pending), including any reason provided when declining
- Audit records within the club dashboard, including which Club Manager performed each action and when
10.2 How Club Managers Can Search for You
Club Managers have access to a club admin dashboard. They can search for a TradeSoft user by entering an email address. If a matching account exists, the Club Manager will see your display name and profile photo (if set). Only verified Club Managers can perform this lookup. This feature exists to allow Club Managers to invite known club members who already have a TradeSoft account.
10.3 What Is Shared Publicly if You Accept Club Membership
If you accept an invitation to join a club on TradeSoft, the following will be displayed publicly within the App:
- A "Club Verified" badge on your active listings
- Your club association on your profile page, including the club's name and a link to the club's website or social media (as provided by the club)
You may be removed from a club at any time by a Club Manager (for example, if your club membership lapses). Upon removal, your Club Verified badge and club association will no longer appear on your profile or listings.
10.4 Consent and Control
Club membership on TradeSoft is voluntary. When a Club Manager invites you, you will receive an in-app notification and must actively accept the invitation before any club association is displayed on your profile or listings. You may decline an invitation at any time, with or without providing a reason.
10.5 Lawful Basis
We process club membership data on the basis of your consent (accepting the invitation) and legitimate interest (supporting community trust and accountability on the platform).
11. Commercial Accounts & Businesses
TradeSoft offers a separate account type for businesses selling in trade: retailers, importers, stores, ranges, fields, and event operators. This section explains what we collect from a business, what we publish about it, and what a business gets to see about you. The rules those accounts operate under are in Section 10 of our Terms of Service.
11.1 If You Register a Commercial Account
A commercial account belongs to a business, but a person registers and operates it, so we collect information about both. We collect and store:
- The business name, your own name, and your email address
- Your password (hashed, never stored in plain text) and your two-factor authentication enrolment. Two-factor authentication is mandatory on commercial accounts. We store only what is needed to check the codes you enter, and we receive nothing else from your authenticator app.
- Your business profile information: website, description, logo, header image, public contact email address and phone number, locations, addresses, and opening hours
- Your plan, subscription status, and billing records, as described in Section 11.4
- Any request you send us to claim a business directory entry, and anything you send in support of it
- Your automatic reply template, if you set one up
- A record of every change to your account's approval status, including who made the decision, when, and any reason given, plus a log of actions taken in the business dashboard
Your own name and email address are collected so that we can administer the account and contact you about it, and so that we can match a verified email domain against a business we have already listed. Your name is not shown on the public business profile.
Address details are looked up through Google Maps Platform, and the registration form is protected by a Cloudflare anti-bot challenge. Both are described in Section 3.3.
11.2 What We Publish About a Business
An approved commercial account has a public business profile and appears in our business directory. What is published is set out in Section 5. A commercial account has no personal profile page.
Unclaimed directory entries. We may create a directory entry for a New Zealand airsoft business before anyone from that business has signed up, using information the business has already made public, such as its name, description, website, contact details, address, and images. These entries describe a business rather than an individual, and they carry no listings, no feedback, and no way to message anyone. If you are the business and would rather not be listed, email [email protected] and we will remove the entry.
11.3 What a Business Sees About You
A business sees the same information about you that any other seller does: your display name, profile photo, home region, feedback history, and last online status, plus whatever you write in a message or a public question. In addition:
- If you use the Buy button, your TradeSoft display name is added to the link that takes you to the business's own website, so it can match your order to your TradeSoft account. Your email address, phone number, and real name are not sent.
- Using the Buy button opens a message thread on that listing, which is what allows a sale to be recorded and feedback to be exchanged. The business may reply automatically; automated messages are marked as such in the thread.
- If a business marks a listing as sold to you, the sale and any feedback that follows are recorded against both of you in the normal way.
Businesses do not receive a customer list, a data export, or your email address from us. Once you are on a business's own website, that business's privacy policy applies to whatever it collects there, not this one.
11.4 Billing Information
Commercial subscriptions are paid through Stripe on the Website. Card details are entered directly into Stripe's own payment fields and never reach us, as described in Section 3.3. We keep a record of the plan, the subscription status and renewal date, and each invoice, including the amount actually charged, the date, and the card brand and last four digits. We never hold a full card number.
11.5 Lawful Basis
We process commercial account information to provide the service under our agreement with the business, to meet our accounting and legal obligations, and in our legitimate interest in running a marketplace where buyers can tell a business from a private seller, where businesses can be identified and held accountable, and where fraudulent registrations can be detected and stopped.
12. Data Retention
| Data Type | Retention Period |
|---|---|
| Active account data | Retained for the life of your account |
| Listings (active, expired, sold) | Retained while your account exists; deleted with account |
| Messages and Q&A text | Retained while your account exists; deleted with account. Photos sent in messages are removed on their own schedule, set out below |
| Feedback (received) | Retained for 90 days after account deletion, then deleted |
| Profile photos and listing images | Deleted within 30 days of account deletion or listing deletion |
| Listing photos after a listing is sold, archived, or expires | The main photo is kept. The additional photos are removed 180 days after the listing is sold, archived, or expires. The listing itself, its details, and the trade and feedback history attached to it are kept |
| Sold listings (public visibility) | A listing stops being publicly viewable 90 days after it is marked sold. The seller and the buyer can still see it. Feedback and trade history are not affected |
| Photos sent in messages | Removed 90 days after they are sent. The text of your messages is kept |
| Photos uploaded but never attached to a listing | Removed after 30 days |
| Anything connected to a report, a ScamScan flag, an account that is suspended or under investigation, or a legal hold | Retained for as long as it is needed. This overrides the other retention periods in this table |
| Purchase records (bump packs, featured payments), including the card brand and last four digits for Website payments | Retained for 7 years for accounting and legal compliance |
| Payment and fraud-check records held by Stripe | Retained by Stripe under its own retention policy, to meet its financial and anti-fraud obligations |
| Mailing list subscription records | Retained until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them. After you unsubscribe we keep a minimal suppression record (your email address) so that we do not email you again by mistake. |
| Email delivery, bounce, and spam-complaint logs (Amazon SES and SNS) | Retained for up to 12 months for deliverability and list hygiene |
| Email engagement data (opens and clicks) | Retained for up to 24 months, then deleted or reduced to aggregate figures |
| Anonymised analytics data (PostHog) | Retained per PostHog's data retention policies |
| Club membership records and club dashboard audit logs | Retained while your account exists; deleted with account |
| Blocked-user relationships and reports you submit | Blocks are cleared when you unblock the user or delete your account; reports may be retained after the related content or account is removed as a record of the moderation action |
| Payment details (bank account name and number, payment notes, GST number), together with the record of when they were set, changed, and shared | Retained while your account exists; deleted with account. Where the account was suspended for fraud, a one-way digest of the bank account number is kept as set out below |
| Ban-evasion and fraud identifiers (secure one-way digests, or hashes, of details such as email addresses, phone numbers, device identifiers, and bank account numbers associated with an account that has been banned or suspended for fraud) | Retained after account deletion or termination, solely to enforce bans and stop suspended users returning to the platform. These digests cannot be reversed to reveal the original information |
| Commercial account records (business profile, locations, plan history) and business dashboard audit logs | Retained while the account exists. The record of approval, decline, and suspension decisions is kept after the account closes, as a record of the decisions we made and why |
| Commercial subscription and invoice records, including the card brand and last four digits | Retained for 7 years for accounting and legal compliance |
| Unclaimed business directory entries | Retained until the business claims the entry or asks us to remove it |
| Data connected to a suspended account, or to an investigation, dispute, or law-enforcement request | Retained for as long as it is needed for that purpose, including after you ask us to delete your account |
We do not send a warning email or a notification before a photo is removed, and a removed photo cannot be recovered. See our Terms of Service (Section 4.7) for the same periods in full, and Section 4.8 there for what photo retention means if you want to relist a sold item.
When you delete your account, your personal data is scheduled for deletion within 90 days. During this period, your account and listings are removed from public view immediately. We retain data for this period to assist with fraud detection, dispute resolution, and legal compliance. Purchase records are retained longer where required by law. Where an account has been banned or terminated for breaching our Terms, we may keep a limited set of identifiers after deletion for the specific purpose of enforcing that ban and preventing the creation of new accounts to evade it. Those identifiers are kept as secure one-way digests (hashes) of details such as email addresses, phone numbers, device identifiers, and bank account numbers. They cannot be reversed to reveal the original information, and they are not used for any purpose other than preventing a suspended user from returning to the platform.
There is one exception to the deletion timeframe above. If your account is suspended, or is connected to an investigation, a dispute, a chargeback, or a request from Police or another authority, we place the account under a hold. Deleting a held account still works and still ends your access permanently: the account and its listings are removed from public view immediately, and you will not be able to sign in or create a new account. The difference is that the underlying records are kept rather than destroyed, for as long as they are needed for that purpose. We rely on Information Privacy Principle 9 of the Privacy Act 2020, which allows us to keep information for as long as it is required for a lawful purpose.
13. Security
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, loss, misuse, or alteration, including:
- Passwords are hashed and never stored in plain text
- Data in transit is encrypted using TLS
- Access to backend systems is restricted and role-scoped via Supabase Row Level Security (RLS) policies
- Storage paths are scoped to individual user IDs
- Bank account numbers are stored encrypted. Access to them by our team is restricted and every access is logged
- Identifiers we keep to enforce bans are stored as one-way digests (hashes) that cannot be reversed
- Card payments on the Website are handled inside Stripe's own payment fields. Full card numbers never reach our servers, and Stripe is certified to PCI DSS Level 1, the highest level in the card industry's security standard
- Our email marketing platform runs on a separate, dedicated installation with administrator access limited to us
- Commercial accounts require two-factor authentication, which cannot be switched off, and the business dashboard can only be reached by a session that has passed that second step
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security and encourage you to use a strong, unique password and keep your account credentials confidential.
14. Children's Privacy
TradeSoft is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has created an account, please contact us at [email protected] and we will promptly delete the account and associated data.
15. Your Privacy Rights
Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, you have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you
- Correct any information that is inaccurate or out of date
- Request deletion of your account and associated personal data (subject to the retention periods in Section 12)
- Opt out of optional data uses at any time, including promotional notifications and marketing emails. For email, use the unsubscribe link in any marketing message or contact us directly (see Section 7.2).
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond within 20 working days, as required by the Privacy Act.
If you are unsatisfied with our response, you have the right to make a complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at www.privacy.org.nz.
16. International Data Transfers
TradeSoft uses service providers that may store or process your data outside New Zealand, including:
- Supabase: infrastructure hosted on AWS (region may vary)
- PostHog: data may be processed in the United States or European Union
- Twilio: SMS processing infrastructure based in the United States
- Google Cloud Vision API: image analysis infrastructure operated by Google, based in the United States
- RevenueCat: based in the United States
- Google Maps Platform: address lookup and mapping infrastructure operated by Google, based in the United States
- Cloudflare: based in the United States, with traffic handled at whichever of its global locations is closest to you
- Stripe: based in the United States, with payment and fraud-prevention processing that may take place in the United States and other countries where Stripe operates
- Amazon Web Services: email sending (SES) and delivery notifications (SNS) run in Amazon's Asia Pacific (Sydney) region, in Australia
- Hostinger: the tradesoft.app website and our mailing platform (including our mailing list) are hosted on Hostinger servers located in the United States
Where data is transferred internationally, we rely on our service providers' own privacy and security commitments, and we take reasonable steps to ensure your data is handled in a manner consistent with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020.
17. Third-Party Links & Services
Listings on TradeSoft may include YouTube links provided by sellers. Tapping these links will open a third-party application or browser. TradeSoft is not responsible for the privacy practices of third-party services. We encourage you to review their privacy policies before engaging with them.
User profiles may display links to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts. These are provided by users and are subject to the privacy policies of those platforms.
18. Safety Controls, Reporting & Automated Enforcement
TradeSoft gives you in-app tools to manage your experience and help keep the community safe:
- Blocking: you can block another user from their profile or from Settings → Blocked Users. Once a block is in place it takes effect for both people: neither of you can message the other or mention the other in Discussions, and each of you is hidden from the other's listings, profile, public Q&A, and discussion posts. You can unblock a user at any time.
- Reporting: you can report a listing, a user, a message, or a discussion thread or comment to us for review. A report records the reason you select and any optional detail you add. Reports are visible only to TradeSoft and are not shown to the user you report.
When you block a user or submit a report, we store the resulting records (including who blocked or reported whom, the reason, and any detail provided) to operate these tools, keep an audit trail, review reported content, and prevent misuse of the reporting system. We may act on reports by removing content or suspending or terminating accounts, as set out in our Terms of Service. See Section 12 for how long this information is retained.
Automated enforcement. Some of our safety checks run automatically. Accounts may be automatically suspended where their details match identifiers associated with fraud, as described in Sections 9.3 and 12. If you believe your account has been suspended in error, contact us at [email protected] and we will review it.
19. Contact
For any questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal information:
Email: [email protected]
We aim to respond to all privacy-related enquiries within 20 working days.
This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with the TradeSoft Terms of Service.